Carolyn Hitt on how the BBC Wales Sports Personality shortlist was chosen

The BBC Sports Personality of the Year rarely comes without some kind of eyebrow-raising incident.

The BBC Sports Personality of the Year rarely comes without some kind of eyebrow-raising incident.

In past years we’ve seen Sue Barker discover her inner Bernard Manning as the smutty madam asked Mike Ruddock could he “keep Henson out of Church”.

We shared Joe Calzaghe’s pain when, in his own words, he was “beaten by a horse”, albeit one ridden by the Queen’s grand-daughter.

And the tricky issue of mobilising votes for less obvious candidates precedes Twitter and Facebook by 20 years.

Thanks to the readers of the Angling Times, fisherman Bob Nudd topped the nominations in 1991 only to be denied the win by the BBC who said the magazine’s printed nomination forms amounted to an orchestrated campaign.

As the phone and text vote closes for the BBC Wales Sports Personality at 6pm today, there’s a lesson to be learned from Bob Nudd-gate. If you don’t actually vote for the finalist you think is bound to win anyway, they might not - so pick up the phone.

The only certain result from the UK BBC Sport Personality of the Year is that the winner will be a man. When the shortlist was released there was understandable uproar that the judges couldn’t find room for a single female.

Once it was revealed that the panel included such credible sporting organs as Nuts and Zoo magazine, however, the snub wasn’t quite so surprising. These publications would be more interested in the uncoverage of sportswomen than coverage.

Yet one of the positive side effects of the competition’s quite shocking ignorance of the UK’s elite sporting females was the debate it sparked on coverage of women’s sport. Clare Balding and Gabby Logan led the charge on social media while the London papers hastily devoted double page spreads to sportswomen who could have made the cut.

The flurry of articles on sportswomen may well skew a statistic than has remained pretty static in recent years. According to the annual report of the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation, just five per cent of all sports media coverage is devoted to women’s sport. And that’s in a good year.

Another telling figure to emerge was that less than 10 per cent of sports journalists in Britain are female. Which rather tip-tackles the gender balance of those who chose the women-free SPOTY shortlist.

Wales’s own female sporting icon Baroness Grey-Thompson highlighted the “chronic lack of investment” in women’s sport in the UK from sponsors and broadcasters despite increased interest from spectators and viewers.

In her role as chair of the Commission on the Future of Women’s Sport, Grey-Thompson revealed that sponsorship of women’s elite sport in the UK amounted to just 0.5% of the total market.

That compared to 61.1% for men’s sport, with mixed sports occupying the remainder.

So perhaps the sports journalists who created their men-only shortlist can be forgiven.

With those statistics the poor dabs will be lucky to have even heard of anyone other than Jessica Ennis.

When the BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year shortlist was unveiled, I had no qualms about its quality or balance. Which, after all the flack that has flown in UK SPOTY’s direction, is just as well as I was on the judging panel.

We chose five Welsh world champions: Nathan Cleverly, WBO light-heavyweight champion; motorcyclist Chaz Davies, world Supersport champion; Dai Greene, world 400m hurdle champion; Helen Jenkins, world triathlon champion and Paralympian Nathan Stephens, both world champion and world record holder for javelin.

No-one could argue that a Welsh world champion should not make the shortlist of BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year surely?

Of course they could. This is Wales. A country whose sporting identity comes in two broad shapes – oval and round. So the headline wasn’t: Five World Champions compete for BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year. It was: No rugby or football player on Welsh SPOTY Shortlist. Talk about glass half empty.

Four Welsh men and one Welsh woman had reached the global pinnacle of their respective sports but here I was being asked to defend their right to be recognised as the best in the world in their native country.

“No rugby or football players – have they got it wrong?” asked Jason Mohammad as I sat in the studio alongside fellow Western Mail scribe Steve Tucker, affectionately known as the Jeremy Clarkson of Welsh sport.

Some of the more mature male listeners of Wales seem to think the lunchtime show is the moan-in rather than the phone-in but even by their standards of disgruntlement the first comment was some curveball. If there was one candidate on our shortlist I assumed no-one could possibly have an issue with it was European, Commonwealth and World Champion athlete Dai Greene.

But this bloke was having none of it.

“Dai Greene shouldn’t be on there because he’s aligned himself to GB,” he declared.

Once I’d finished banging my forehead on the desk in utter incredulity there was another caller claiming “99% of women have no interest in sport”.

Then came the most depressing and ill-informed comment of all: “Paralympic people should have their own awards”.

As a snapshot of Welsh sporting opinion it wasn’t the most enlightened picture but thankfully it was countered by an equal number of callers who supported the selection of unashamed Welsh winners.

Former rugby, judo and wrestling international Non Evans joined the debate by questioning my credentials to be a judge, which was a bit of an ouch moment.

But she seemed to calm down when I assured her alongside this mere journalist, Tom Shanklin, Matt Elias, Nathan Blake and former Welsh football captain and chair of Sport Wales, Laura McAllister, made up the panel.

Non was also unhappy with the lack of football and rugby representation on the Welsh shortlist, even though there is, of course, a separate team award.

At this point I’ll admit that, like Tom Shanklin, my final list contained Sam Warburton rather than Chaz Davies.

But in a powerful polemic online this week Laura McAllister summed up why it was the right decision to choose five world champions for the BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year shortlist.

“I strongly believe that the Awards must be about winners, as well as being about full equality between sports. No sport is inherently better than others, as each can bring similar success and pleasure in participating,” wrote Laura.

“So, on that basis, how can we consider omitting any of the five that have been short-listed? They are all world champions. They have all reached the highest possible rung within their sport on the global stage. Each of them is a true winner.

“Rugby and football – despite uplifting and inspiring performances by our national teams – have not won any major trophies this year. So, to be equal and fair, how can we shortlist them alongside these world champions? Football and rugby – which will be recognised within the awards – should not have a higher status than any other sport where we do have clear winners.

“While recognising a diverse set of role models is something I am absolutely passionate about, this wasn’t a factor when, as a panel, we came together to shortlist the outstanding talent we have in Wales. We simply picked the best in the world from Wales and I’ll make no apologies for that.”

And neither will I. The fact that Wales produced five world champions in 2011 is something to be celebrated not denigrated.

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